By JAYSON JACOBY

Bill Smith went deer hunting and brought home a moose.

Not an actual moose.

It’s illegal to kill one of those in Oregon, and Smith, a retired Baker City Fire Chief, abides the law.

Besides which Smith wouldn’t want to try to explain to a skeptical game warden how he mistook a half-ton bull moose with antlers that look like serrated ceiling-fan blades for a 150-pound buck deer with antlers no wider than a pepperoni stick.

In fact Smith never even fired his rifle during three days of hunting in the Eagle Cap Wilderness.

But if there was a moose-hunting season in this state … well, in that case Smith would be waiting for a phone call from the taxidermist and maybe munching on a moose steak while he waited.

Because the moose he saw made as perfect a target as one of those paper bull’s- eyes.

Except the moose was quite a bit bigger.

So Smith pushed the button on his camera instead of pulling the trigger on his rifle.

He returned from the Eagle Cap with 11 photographs.

Also a humdinger of a hunting tale one so compelling and so improbable that Smith hardly cares he didn’t get his buck.

andquot;I came home and told everyone I bagged me a moose,andquot; he said, chuckling. andquot;That makes it well worthwhile.andquot;

Smith’s two-way radio chimed, and the voice of his hunting partner, Chuck Peterson of Halfway, rasped out of the Oreo-sized speaker.

The static wasn’t excessive Peterson was sitting on a granitic promontory only about a mile away but Smith was sure he must have misheard.

What he thought Peterson said was this: andquot;There’s a moose coming in your direction.andquot;

Right.

Sure.

A moose, strolling through Burger Meadows at the southwest corner of the Eagle Cap.

It’s Union County, not the Yukon.

It was about 9 in the morning, Sunday, Oct. 1, the second day of the buck deer season, and here Peterson was talking about a moose.

Smith was skeptical but he continued to scan the forested slope that stretched below him, dipping north toward the deep gash of the Minam River Canyon.

Moose or no, he had a buck tag in his pocket and he wasn’t going to get any venison with his eyes closed.

Just a few minutes after Peterson’s strange transmission, Smith saw a dark brown smudge that seemed to be moving up the ridge toward him.

The smudge was hundreds of yards away, though, and it might have been an elk or a deer or even a bear.

Smith kept watching, though, and when he next saw the smudge it was much clearer, and considerably closer.

Close enough that Smith knew it wasn’t an elk.

Or a deer.

And it definitely was no bear.

andquot;It was like, ‘I don’t believe this, there’s no way there’s a moose up here,’ andquot; Smith said.

Except there was.

And the moose, just as Peterson had said, was ambling in Smith’s direction.

Smith stayed put and the moose continued to climb, meandering between thickets of subalpine fir and lodgepole pine and skirting granitic boulder gardens.

Eventually the animal stepped onto a hiking trail.

The same hiking trail where Smith had paused to watch for deer.

He took one photograph with his 35 mm film camera.

Then he snapped a second shot.

The moose, which Smith estimates was 50 feet away, paid him no heed and seemed, in fact, not to realize that Smith was close by.

andquot;I took those pictures with a flash, and I thought for sure he’d see that, or hear the click and take off,andquot; Smith said.

All he can figure is that because the wind was blowing in his face, and because the sun was directly behind him, the moose neither smelled nor saw him.

Whatever the reason, Smith was afforded the sort of moose photo opportunity a person rarely gets outside a zoo.

Although the zoo has certain advantages over a wilderness area, and not just deep-fried elephant ears to go along with the elephants.

Fences, for instance.

And a fence, or any other moose-proof obstacle, is a reassuring thing to have, because a bad-tempered moose is not an animal you’d want to tangle with.

(Although probably you would do well to not tangle with a moose no matter its mood.)

andquot;I wanted a tree between him and I, to be quite honest with you,andquot; Smith said.

After a bit andquot;it was probably a minute, it seemed like 20,andquot; Smith said the moose did detect Smith.

But even then the animal didn’t bolt, the way a deer or an elk usually does particularly during autumn, when the people with guns prowl the land.

andquot;He took three big steps but he basically just wandered off,andquot; Smith said. andquot;He wasn’t running.andquot;

Deer-wise, the hunt was a bust.

Neither Smith nor Peterson saw a buck during their long weekend in the Eagle Cap.

andquot;We saw two does and two fawns on Sunday afternoon, but we never saw any deer tracks,andquot; Smith said.

They did see some elk, but deer hunters always see elk during deer season.

(Smith is hunting elk this week, and he’s certain he’ll see a bunch of bucks.)

But not even the biggest buck, mounted on Smith’s wall, would have made the trip as memorable as the moose did.

andquot;It’s the only bull moose I’ve ever seen in the wild,andquot; said Smith, who watched a couple of cow moose years ago in Yellowstone National Park. andquot;I never thought I’d see one in the Eagle Cap Wilderness.

andquot;He was just a beautiful, beautiful animal.andquot;